Sunday, April 13, 2008

Thank you Jodi Zarkos, for writing about racism in sports. Racism and hidden personal prejudices are among our worst weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, for many reasons it is one of our most challenging subjects to address.

According to research from the University of Texas at Austin, “Umpires for Major League Baseball are more likely to call strikes in favor of pitchers who share their race or ethnicity.”

One of the longtime MLB rules states that an umpire should not make a call to ‘even things up’ from an earlier bad call. This regulation is one of the most ignored rules on the books and it sounds like the Pocatello umpire disregarded the “even things up” rule.

In a second related story, last week the Idaho Statesman picked up an article about sportsmanship from OgdenUtah’s Standard-Examiner called,

'They say it starts with a prayer and ends with a fight'

To promote better sportsmanship, some of the immensely popular LDSChurch basketball leagues have instituted new rules, giving points for sportsmanship, which can actually change the scoring results of games.

I’m not sure how the outcome of the game that you witnessed would have shifted had points been rewarded for sportsmanship. It sounds like non-sportsmanlike actions were sourcing from several angles. However, I think that we can have faith that at least some of the participating sportspersons took a cue from the behavior they witnessed and chalked it up to the “do-not-dews.”

Many of us have personal prejudices imbedded deep within us, which we would prefer to deny. Now, a machine can scan your mind for unconscious racism:

I wonder if referee oversight committees will ever integrate a machine like this into future sporting justice initiatives.For starters, perhaps we should regulate the privilege to boo. That is, before we permit anyone to boo or yell “two blind mice” when they perceive a bad call, they should show that they have been in the challenging position of being a sports-referee, making split-second judgments, while trying to stay color-blind.

Lastly, one bit of racism right under our noses during these festive community-sporting events is the dehumanizing use of mascot names, such as Salmon Savages and Blackfoot Indians.

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The Original Spark

"The Compendia" and official web blog of the ICL:

Tuesday, Decemeber 30, 2003

As archivist of the Idaho Conversation League, begun in March, the moon of the shaking willows in the year of the cricket and continuing through the new millenium, I invite all participants to post, in whatever fashion and in whatever order -stories large and small and with or with out end -to the Global Eye of the free world in the democratic spirit of free range speculation, honest inquiry, poetry and rant. Password available on request at twoskies@hotmail.com

Ayn Rand Quotes

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.

A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims.

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.

Government "help" to business is just as disastrous as government persecution... the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.

Just as man can't exist without his body, so no rights can exist without the right to translate one's rights into reality, to think, to work and keep the results, which means: the right of property.

Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

Man is a being with free will; therefore, each man is potentially good or evil, and it's up to him and only him (through his reasoning mind) to decide which he wants to be.

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.

Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.

People create their own questions because they are afraid to look straight. All you have to do is look straight and see the road, and when you see it, don't sit looking at it - walk.

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?

Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think.

The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.

The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.

The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.

The worst guilt is to accept an unearned guilt.

There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.